


Ashes to Ashes

by hopeisabluebird



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Capture, Hallucinations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeisabluebird/pseuds/hopeisabluebird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, the memory will fade, but Sam would swear she saw him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes to Ashes

One of her earliest memories is of playing in the dirt beneath three pine trees outside of her house. She has loved the warm, slightly moist sensation of pebbles, stunted pine needles, pine cone flakes beneath and between the clumps of earth. There was a quality to the sunshine in the late day – too early to be dusk while still to late to be afternoon – that turned the flecks of muck and dust in her hands shiny. And if she cocked her head in just the right way, and brought her brown fingers to her face, and looked through the smudged creases of her palms in just the right way, then the whole world looked brilliant and twinkling. The millions of dust motes and mites in the sky, the bone white pebbles digging into her knobby knees, even the clumps of bird poop clinging to broken pine needles on the ground. Not even the stinging smack of rain against her blond hair tangled with sweat could dim the bright, glass-shattering glare of the pine needles and dirt and poop lit up with light. 

Eventually though, as the light faded into dusk, her daddy would call her in, to scrub her clumsily with generic store soap before dinner of peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches and blue jello for dessert. As he washed her hands in the kitchen sink, one knee propping her up to reach with stubby fingers the cool spray of the leaky faucet, she would take one last peek under his arms through the broken screen of the back door. The magic had usually faded by then, but sometimes, if she was really lucky, she caught its last display, the final jubilee, like the Great and Powerful Oz lit up with light before he became the stumpy man behind the curtain once more, less interesting than even the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. 

It was that magic hour of glitter, she thinks – her way to be both Dorothy and the Wizard – that made her want to fly some day, even though she hated what it had done to her family – to her daddy who was only occasionally there to wash the sticky mud from beneath her fingernails. She had always knelt down to look through her grimy hands at the glitter in the sky, but she always wondered what the glitter might look like from up top. To look down through dirty fingers down at the pine needles and bone white pebbles and bird poop on the ground. 

She had begun to lose her love for the glittering goopiness of mud though after her first journey through the Stargate. Oh, it wasn’t because she encountered less mud. On the contrary, after an endless succession of PX-somethings she felt like she would choke on the loam, dirt, mud, rock, gravel of all the worlds. It got into everything – ears, nose, socks, hair, and fingernails. She could feel the graininess of it through her fingers, and it stuck to her, no matter how many showers she took. She would always find it in her bed the next morning, even if she took three showers and one bubble bath the night before, the bubbles masking with a clear translucence the ever present grit. 

Eventually she started to wonder if it was more than loam or dirt. The crumbling bits of decomposing mud that trickled through her fingers after awhile took on the prickling consistency of sand. No matter how wet the planet, however much like the Amazon rain forest or Thai rice field a PX-something’s dirt was, it felt like sand to her. If she closed her eyes, it wasn’t the glittering, Wizard of Oz magic of not quite sun-filled dust that she held in her hands, but the ashy grains of sand from an hourglass. Each death only added to the store of sand she could feel whenever she cupped her palms and closed her eyes. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

She thought that was made her love the Stargate at first. When she was in the world Between, the shimmering event horizon of the Stargate washed the sand away. In the countless seconds before she took a breath on PX-something or other, her skin felt pure and white and clean. She sometimes smiled faintly, wondering if she glittered slightly in the motion of the wormhole, like her Wizard of Oz world used to in those long ago days of innocence. Before the mud of endless worlds.

The sand settled in her skin though, turning it to pale ash with each mission. She thought it was appropriate that it was ash, since her first loss of innocence, of the glitter of her childhood, took place when Daniel burned on that godforsaken planet, PX-something, and they left him behind. Well, if that was her first loss of innocence, then maybe it was a small grace that he was sitting with her now, in the dank, four-by-four cell on PX-something. 

She knew the torture must be getting to her when Daniel appeared next to her. He sat against the wall, with his legs crossed beneath him just like her. He didn’t look at her. He really didn’t need to even. She had no idea how or why he was in the cell with her. But she wouldn’t question it. His skin was pure and white and clean like hers was while she was in the world Between, and not a grain of sand stained him. 

Sometimes she felt like she carried the world Between within her, even while not passing the event horizon of the Stargate. It was treacherous, and changed from a kind of baptism between the event horizons of the Stargates into a prison when carried between the palms of her hands. It set her apart, gated her off, locked her up. She was a scientist in the military. A woman in a man’s world. However much she tried, through the stubborn grit and naïve curiosity and wide-eyed wonder, to carve a place for herself within that world, she had never quite succeeded. There were too many complications, too many contradictions, and one thing she needed that she could never have. But if she was in the world Between then so was Daniel. A conscience when too many thought in terms of means to ends. An idealist among pragmatists who only saw as far as the next mission. A man for whom the barrel of a gun or the tip of the knife still felt awkward in his hand. The atmosphere of the ivory tower had settled on him like a second skin, impervious even to the sand and ash of death and the countless succession of PX-somethings. 

Maybe that was why the word friendship felt like such a trite definition of the bond they shared. It had started, after all, with only the unspoken acknowledgement that they were outsiders. Of course, she always thought the slight grin Daniel had made to her after that first mission was the rueful expression of a shared experience, but there was always the slightly unfocused glaze in his eyes that made her wonder if he was looking at her, or at some artifact or dusty tome. Whatever the case, whether that first grin was meant for her or not, didn’t change the fact that they were bonded. They shared the world Between. 

But she thanked God (the great Wizard behind the curtain) that Daniel had that unfocused glaze in his eyes more often than not. Because despite how much the word friendship seemed like a trite definition for the bond they shared, as small part of her felt the greasy weight, like a pile of mud in her stomach, of disappointment that it was Daniel and not …. here with her now. She hoped he never found out that every time one of his nine lives was chalked out the only thing she could think was, “Thank God it wasn’t him.” 

It was why she afraid to touch him, and why she hated (sometimes with a white hot rage that settled in the pit of her stomach like a black hole full of nothing and everything) that she could touch Daniel. The ashy sand that had settled into the very creases of her skin would someday brush off on him. Ashes to ashes. It was the curse of her lost innocence that she could not touch him without destroying them both. But Daniel, blessed with nine lives and a wide-eyed curiosity that had no will to power, was shielded from her curse. With him, it was back to the holy glitter of pine needles and mud in her back yard. 

When she slumped against the wall after another beating and found him waiting for her, she forgot about her bitterness that it wasn’t him who could be with her now. Daniel was here. He would help her survive. He would help her find that lost magic between the palms of her hands. Maybe some of the glittering purity of the world Between that had settled into his skin would transfer to her, would rub the sand of her curse away. She was too tried to find out though. It had been too long since she could think with the clarity of her lab. In the dank, four-by-four cell time had become less of a thing that passed than an entity that had pressed against her eardrums, not ticking along to its own rhythm, but pulsing in one long whole note. Her head slumped against the wall and she closed her eyes, hoping when she opened them it would be him sitting next to her, sickeningly ashamed for not appreciating Daniel’s gift, whatever magic he had worked to be with her now …

“Sam,” he whispered. “You have to … to wake up. You know I will be here for you … as long as I can. But … you have to stay strong for Jack. And Teal’c. They still need you.”

She wasn’t sure if she believed him. After all, she was stuck in the world Between, slowly becoming buried in an hourglass of sand and ash and dust. “I can’t, Daniel,” she murmured. “I’m too tired.”

She thought he would blaze out in a fire of anger and frustration at her, stuttering and slurring his vowels in his haste to be her conscience. But instead, she felt a strange warmth creeping along her body. It started in her toes and moved up, reaching her eyes and the palms of her hands several long moments later. She moved her head slightly and looked at her hands. They were clean and white, and she rubbed them together, gently at first, and then spasmodically, searching for the familiar graininess of grit and ash. When all she felt after the silent search was skin – just plain skin – she brought her shaking palms up to her face and looked through the creases in her fingers in just the right way. Her head felt clearer than it had since she had stumbled away from her team and been captured. 

Her breath caught. 

In the hazy musings between torture and pain she had not questioned the fact of Daniel’s presence. What she had at first thought was the manifestation of his compassion and ivory tower stubbornness and innocence (so lost to her now), was really a physical glittering glow that had settled into his clothes, like the magic of Oz. The whole dank, four-by-four cell was lit by the fire of his skin. 

“Are you really here … with me?” she whispered.

“I will stay with you … for as long as you need me, Sam,” he said. “I will stay with you until Jack and Teal’c come. They’re coming, you know. They’ve almost found you. You only need to stay strong … for a little while longer. And then you can go home, Sam.” 

She had never meant to say it, sure that the only way out of the world Between was to be strong, to show the world of military might and men that she could be just like them, shoving her round peg into a square hole with a single-minded determination that scraped and scoured the glitter of childhood from her skin. But somehow the obligatory “I’m fine” got lost between her throat and her mouth, and what came out was a whimpered, “You won’t leave me?” 

“I will be here … as long as you need me,” he whispered. 

She settled back against the wall and smiled slightly when his hand took hers, the fire in his skin keeping her warm until Jack finally came. 

Right before she fell asleep in the infirmary, she whispered, “Thank you for saving me … my friend.”

The words seemed so trite for what he had done. But when someone saves you from the curse, from the sand of death, from the world Between, she figures words like thank you and my friend will never be adequate.


End file.
